Archive for June, 2013

Not good. Read here. I was hoping this wouldn’t happen. I don’t like the Vikings at all – obviously. Hate them. But Bishop is a very good player and a good guy whose recent release continues to be a mystery to most Packer fans. There is something unsettling to me about an aggressive former Packer playmaker being snatched up by a rival like this – I used to like watching him blow up opponents but I’ll be uncomfortable with him potentially blowing up Packers.

As I wrote in the last post, Desmond Bishop being the odd ILB out is ridiculous. I know he’s coming off an injury, but Hawk is coming off of chronic below-averageness and Brad Jones is coming off of never-doing-anything-at-all…ness. The whole thing leaves me suspicious. I think one of two things may have happened:

The Packers either know or have reason to believe Bishop’s injury is likely to be a bigger problem than Bishop is claiming. (Though again, an injured Bishop is better than either of the other clowns in the middle.)

Someone in the organization (McCarthy? Dom Capers? TT?) simply doesn’t like Desmond Bishop. I’m not sure how this could be the case when by all accounts he is such a good guy – and of course this wouldn’t make sense considering his on-field performance. But this isn’t the first time the Packers have essentially screwed Bishop. He waited far too long before being given the chance to play regularly on this team. He was good enough to start a full 2 years before he actually did take over as a starter.

Teams will come after Bishop big-time (they apparently already are). He will dominate again. And even if he ends up on the Vikes, I’ll still be a Desmond Bishop fan.

Read here from Tyler Dunne. You all already know how I feel about this possibility. It’s ridiculous. There has to be some more negative information somewhere about his health or something. While it can be difficult to fully recover from any injury that puts a player out for a full year, Bishop is only 28 years old. But of course the most concerning aspect of this possibility to me is that even if Bishop were playing at 40% and barely able to run, he’d be better than both Brad Jones and AJ Hawk!!!! How in the world could Bishop potentially be the odd man out here? I was a bit concerned when we dumped DJ Smith because I think he had more potential than Hawk or Jones. And I can’t believe Brad Jones was given the contract he was given. He is no better than average. While Hawk was pretty solid in the early part of last season, the second half of the season (when we needed him most) he reverted to the shoddy/inconsequential play that has characterized his career.

I hope this story has a happy ending – we not only need Bishop on the team, we need him as a starter and the leader of the defense…especially now that Woodson is gone.

Read here from ESPN. I’m very interested to see how this whole reconciliation/number retirement process goes. I know for several years now that Mark Murphy and the Packers have wanted to work toward putting an end to all this. And it has now been several years since Favre has been out of the NFL. But I suspect there are still a number of Packer fans that will struggle with all of this. I still struggle with this.

Here’s an interesting question in light of all of this: what would the collective Packer fan attitude be toward Favre and Ted Thompson right now if the Packers hadn’t won that Super Bowl a couple years back?